The Lake Mills Area School District and others nearby are addressing looming budget deficits, problems some administrators are blaming on a lack of increase in funding from the state government.
The district, like many others, has seen a rise in costs, especially with staff benefits, district administrator Tonya Olson said.
“The funding continues to decrease in the state of Wisconsin, and that puts a strain on school districts, especially when cost of living has increased and all of our costs continue to increase, as well,” Olson said. “Then, there’s also a lack of people going into the educational field, so that forces us to be a little bit more competitive in pay and benefits, which is hard to afford to do when you don’t have an increase in your budget.”
The district came close to a deficit last year, but was able to avoid one by using ESSER funding. This year, its deficit is an estimated $500,000, district business manager Tasha Naylor said.
While Wisconsin’s per-pupil education spending has increased 48.6% since 2002, while the national average for education spending has increased by 75.2% in the same amount of time according to the report.
In 2002, Wisconsin’s spending was well above the national average at $8,574 per pupil and increased to $12,740 in 2020, increasing only slightly more than inflation, which rose 43.9% in the same time, according to the report. The increase was the third smallest in the nation, behind Idaho and Indiana.
This leaves the state’s spending level about 6% below the national average.
Courtesy of Wisconsin Policy Forum
Districts have received some additional funding in the past couple of years from the federal government, however.
The 2021 American Rescue Plan made available one-time funding to aid districts in their pandemic response, known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding. And some districts have used it to patch budget holes.
“Essentially, when you look at it, the ESSER funding was the legislature’s rationale to give no new aid to schools in the state in the state budget,” Banker said.
The funds were designed for immediate response to the pandemic, as well as limited-scope programming to assist with the learning loss that resulted from the tumultuous COVID learning experience.
McFarland School District, without the ESSER funding, would be facing a $1.7 million structural deficit, business manager Jeff Mahoney said. For Deerfield Community School District, the first two rounds of funding went directly to pandemic response while the third round, totaling around $531,000, was earmarked for student intervention programs.
“I know that that $531,000 can look like a lot, because that’s in people’s mind, that’s a half million dollars, but when you start paying for staff, that’s not very much,” DCSD administrator Michelle Jensen said of the funding.
Monona Grove superintendent Dan Olson wrote in an email that an “increasingly urgent staffing crisis, worsened by a looming fiscal crisis” is what public education is facing all over the country and even more so in Wisconsin.
“Between 2021-22 and 2022-23, we have put an additional $1.9 million into creating competitive teacher salaries despite zero increase in per pupil revenue limits from the State (despite the State’s current $3.8 billion budget surplus and Governor Evers’s recent proposed $750 million for public schools in Wisconsin, later rejected by the Legislature).”
The Cambridge School District is preparing for a nearly $415,000 deficit in its preliminary budget, administrator Marggie Banker told the school board June 20.
“With stable and slightly declining enrollment, there is no new revenue for Cambridge schools,” Banker told the Cambridge News and Deerfield Independent in an email. “Consequently, we made reductions in staffing and expenses to balance our budget.”
Monona Grove addressed its funding challenges recently with a $3.7 million operational referendum. It’s in its second year of that funding, but Rossing and Dan Olson were both wary of relying on referendums, as districts risk “overextending the very communities” they serve.
“But, that’s a problem that the entire community can’t pick up,” Rossing said of impending budget deficits. “We need the state to invest in the future of our students.”
Deerfield did the same, passing a five year $500,000 operational referendum in 2020.
Jensen said costs have risen sharply due to ongoing costs of transportation, curriculum and utilities while revenue limits imposed by the state’s legislature will force them to make some concessions.
“No new revenue to pay for a consumer price index at 4.7% and growing. No new revenue to pay for rising transportation costs and fuel prices over $5 per gallon, up from an average $3.29 in 2021,” Jensen wrote in an email. “ No new revenue to help schools attract and retain teachers and principals in a highly competitive job market. No new revenue to maintain or upgrade our buildings, many of them aging with inefficient lighting and HVAC systems.”
The Waterloo School District is working on a referendum of its own to solve ongoing budget concerns, approving a question for the November election requesting $700,o0o in additional funds from the community for five years.
It is anticipating a $470,000 deficit, director of business services Susan Gould said.
Lake Mills is considering a building referendum in November to build a new school, and Olson said the district otherwise would be considering an operational referendum to solve budget issues.
But such referendums tend to exacerbate existing inequalities among districts, Olson said.
“I think it (relying on referendums) could create districts of the haves and have nots, very clearly being down in the Madison area, there are districts whose families can support an operational referendum, and are more than willing to do so. But, when you get into districts that are higher poverty, the families can’t support that.”
The pandemic has also created new challenges for districts. Students experienced unprecedented learning loss and come to school with new social, emotional, learning and behavioral needs, Jensen said.
Courtesy of Wisconsin Policy Forum
“I am not sure of the solution to a complex and complicated state budget, but I know the answer for funding public schools is not $0,” Jensen added. “All of us, especially our kids, are worth more than $0.”
Mahoney was not surprised by the lack of new funding for education, adding that it hasn’t been the legislature’s priority.
“It’s no surprise that the investment by our state’s legislatures has not been education. It (the priority) has been a reduction in property taxes statewide,” Mahoney said. “Unless our state determines a different path forward we are going to continue to lag, our rank will continue to be lower, which doesn’t typically translate into better education.”
Lauren was born and raised in Burlington, Wis. before attending UW-Madison and earning her bachelor's degree in journalism and a certificate in photography. Now, she covers the Cambridge, Deerfield, McFarland and Monona Grove School Districts.
